New as in never thought of before? Probably not too many. As to the second question not everyone lives in a modern, connected world. History repeats itself they say. Or if you prefer, great minds think alike.

More broadly speaking. In this day and age of smartphones, constant social media bombardment, casual sex, Uber Eats, and Netflix? Unlikely.

Interesting, because the answer would be revealed in meliorism. Do you believe that the human experience, as a whole, has actually improved over human history? Yes, conditions individually improve or worsen but are we still advancing by some measure? If you believe that, then we are capable of prehending new thoughts because the old set didn't work, we had a new thought, and we improved our experience.

Are there any 'new' thoughts? Or is all our thinking made up of reformulations and expropriations of previous minds/thoughts we have come into contact with? — Professor Death

That would depend a lot on what you think a "thought" is. Is there abstract content to thoughts or are thoughts intrinsically linked to a person?

We can talk about "what" we think, so there must be some way we can at least extract some separate content from a thought that we then communicate. And if we're talking about these extracts, there is probably little that is truly original. But then it cannot be too original, because if it were we'd have trouble communicating it. The thought that we extracted the content from might very well have been unique though.

Reappropriation and expropriation are not opposed or antithetical to novelty. The first person who noticed the one or the other aspect of the duck-rabbit brought something new into the world, despite it being already 'there' in some way:



The first chimpanzee to use a stick to catch termites reappropriated what was there to do something new:



Just as one can use an instrument different for a new purpose, so to can thoughts, applied or implicated differently, be new. Arguably, all 'new' thought begins it's life as reappropriation in this way.

Yes there are.

New stuff is less associated with what humans can create, and think, but more what gensiers can create and think.

New technology may be more about intergrating sense than higher definitions.

A future movie may be just one big interactable, not just full of special effects.

So there is potential for new ideas. It's probably why the big bang happened.

The geniser was an explosives expert, and not an expert of the degrade.

If every thought is singular and successive, then every thought is new with respect to its time, but not necessarily new with respect to its content.

Are there any 'new' thoughts? Or is all our thinking made up of reformulations and expropriations of previous minds/thoughts we have come into contact with? — Professor Death

The geniuses and smartypantses give us the new thoughts. We're too dumb to have brand new ones. Thank god for the geniuses and smartypantses.

Mww
1.5k
If every thought is singular and successive, then every thought is new with respect to its time, but not necessarily new with respect to its content. — Mww

Ladies and Gentlemen...

...we have a winner!

Nail hit squarely on its head.

With information comes newness
In the current age as such
When learning for the first time
The illusion seems as much

Learning comes yet again
From reading the same thing twice
Time then, must have a meaning
As we are never the same men

Thankyouthankyouthankyou....donations gratefully accepted, and will be forwarded to your favorite charity. Honest. Trust me.

If every thought is singular and successive, then every thought is new with respect to its time, but not necessarily new with respect to its content. — Mww

Are you saying thought is time?

Mww
1.5k
↪Frank Apisa

Thankyouthankyouthankyou....donations gratefully accepted, and will be forwarded to your favorite charity. Honest. Trust me. — Mww

I'm willing to trust you and I'd like to donate. But I always do my donations by bank to bank transfer. Just send me your banking info (do it by PM...some of these people may not be as trustworthy as I)...and I'll see to the transfer. Oh...include your social security number in case there are questions.

Hi Professor Death,

What is the timeframe of your question?
Were there any new ideas the last ten years? the last 25? the last 100?

By new thoughts I assume that you mainly are thinking in the direction of new philosophical thoughts, such as a new definition of what is good and evil, a new compelling reasoning on what we ought and ought not to do, or on how societies should govern themselves, or a new theory of what the universe looks like or the ultimate nature of reality.

There are of course an unknown number of fictional characters which were novel at some point, but owing to their great appeal combined with sheer laziness get reused all over again, such as the kid wizard, the pirate captain, the genius sleuth, the damsel in distress, the evil madman etc. ad nauseam.

In terms of scientific and philosophic ideas, here I would say that the idea of gravity, of physical relativity, the idea of uncertainty, the idea of strings, the idea of multiverses, the idea of reality as a sociological construct, the ideas of democracy and of dictatorship of the proletariat, the idea of scientific positivism, were all novel at some point in history, so there is definitely new thoughts coming along, so the timeframe of your question becomes really relevant to what I would answer.

I personally think new ideas are coming along all the time. I remember in 8th grade I had an idea and voiced it in biology class, that within each atom is contained another complete universe. It may be wrong, but was for me a novel idea, and I certainly didn't pick that up from any TV show or books I had read so far. And youtube and google weren't around at that time.

HA!! Excellent.

No. Best we can say is thought is in time, but time itself, if it merely signifies a relation, can have no content of its own. Divisions of time, is still just time.

As long as there is new knowledge there will be new thoughts, so only by knowing all things would we start to run out of new thoughts. If its even possible to know all things, I would guess are pretty far off at this point and the foreseeable future.

You must create an event to find out new things, such as a big bang(which I think is mostly explored now) or something else.

A cutting-edge event, that's like mining a rock, is how new stuff is found.

If you could encircle a human with power of some sort for the whole of it's life, would this event produce new data?

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the quality of the event.

Reappropriation and expropriation are not opposed or antithetical to novelty. — StreetlightX

Sounds like we can apply the theory of evolution by natural selection to our psychology, as in evolutionary psychology. Just as the theory of the evolution of organisms explains how we have many new species as using existing adaptations in novel ways, or genetic modifications to existing structures that has some effect on the organism's fitness to reproduce, it can also apply to how we learn, or apply and falsify our new ideas.

New ideas pop up almost like random mutations, but it is the filtering aspect of natural selection, of falsifying those mutations/ideas, and keeping what works and abandoning what doesn't is what makes some mutation/idea useful or not.

In order to know whether or not there are any new thoughts, we must first ascertain what counts as a thought to begin with, and then perform some sort of comparison/contrast between different ones, while paying particular attention to a timeline. All thought consists of mental correlations drawn between different things.

As Mww noted earlier...

If every thought is singular and successive, then every thought is new with respect to its time, but not necessarily new with respect to its content. — Mww

Here, the content would be the different things within the correlation. Novel correlations drawn between different things would count as new thought(in terms of content) to the thinking creature despite whether or not someone else had already drawn correlations between those things. Novel correlations drawn between different things that no creature had drawn before would count as "new thought" across the board. New in content not only to that creature, but new in content to any and all creatures.

The invention of anything and everything includes novel thought. That's not put strongly enough. The invention of anything and everything IS existentially dependent upon and also consists - in part at least - of novel thought.

New thought IS completely new correlations being drawn between different things. Whether or not those things already existed in their entirety prior to the correlation does not matter a bit. If that thing is being correlated to anything else by a capable creature, and it is the very first time such a connection has even been drawn, it is a new thought.

Period.

Considering the fact, as it appears to me, that countless old problems are yet not solved to the satisfaction of all parties involved, I would say there's no pressing need for new ideas - they would just add to the backlog of uncracked riddles.

That said, the current situation humanity finds itself in isn't one that we could term as favorable - rampant pollution, climate change, overpopulation, etc. have put us in a tight spot with some even suggesting we might have begun an extinction level event. We desperately need new ideas to tackle the colossal problem on our hands. By "new ideas" I don't mean just technological or scientific ones; philosophical ideas - the right ones - do have the power to change people's outlooks and worldviews and that, my friend, can have far reaching effects on politics and business ethics, two key components that have played a role in putting us in this "delightful" state of affairs; perhaps reworking them can save us from disaster.

I personally think new ideas are coming along all the time. I remember in 8th grade I had an idea and voiced it in biology class, that within each atom is contained another complete universe.

With due respect, that is a very common idea. Also the possibility that our galaxies are like atoms in a larger reality.
By contrast, I have a theory that galaxies are half matter and half antimatter. no one else has ever said that.
In design, innovations can be new. Invention can result in a new device, or new application by assembling existing parts.
Writers don't invent words, yet can create something new with them.
Progressive music attempts to be unique, Blues tries to be predictable and derivative.
Uniqueness doesn't necessarily mean art, and art is not completely objective, beauty "in the eyes of the beholder". Art has a real consensus. Artists tend to recognize quality in the work by other artists.
Anyone can write a poem. Those who write the best poetry more fully understand rhyme, meter, alliteration, form, content, colorful descriptions, etc.

By "new ideas" I don't mean just technological or scientific ones; philosophical ideas - the right ones - do have the power to change people's outlooks — TheMadFool

Certainly, in the sciences and math there are lots of new ideas. As new abstract areas of the latter open up new ideas run rampant. But these tend to be very technical and easily misunderstood and misinterpreted by the general public. Look at all the babble about quantum theory. Philosophical ideas about politics and society are more potent. For example, discussions about UBI resonate these days, although the concept is not new. But new environments require new approaches.

What is a thought? In pure sense, there are no new thoughts. They always show up as a combination of signals in the brain that were composed of previous thought. Actually new thought is a different compositiom and form of the other thoughts that already existed.

...there are no new thoughts. They always show up as a combination of signals in the brain that were composed of previous thought... — ttjordy

Infinite regress...

Writers don't invent words, yet can create something new with them. — 3rdClassCitizen

Someone, somewhere along the line coins a term, or a begins some new meaning/use of a pre-existing term for the first time...

Exactly everything turns to original state. Or in fact everything already is and will always bs.

Exactly not what I said.

I know, I was cynical.

Ok. You're still wrong though.

Okay maybe I misunderstood what you meant by infinite regress.